Category: Iceland

This was the photograph I visited Iceland to capture. It was much harder than I had expected and was the cold coupled with my very basic tripod made this extremely difficult to get right. This was taken on the 3rd attempt. Fortunately my hotel was less than 100 metres from the Hallgrimskirkja. I say this because it was early November when this was captured and temperatures are known to drop to -10 degrees C at night in Iceland. Probably should have packed a jacket and some gloves but I’ll know for next time.

Getting an aerial view, be it from a building, nearby hillside or even aircraft, almost always makes for interesting photographs. This was captured at about 70 metres above the city on the observation floor of the Hallgrimskirkja church. The road off to the left is the Skólavörðustígur which leads your eye through the centre of Iceland’s capital city. Even at 2pm the November sun was very low in the sky. As you can see from the long shadow off to the right. I thought that this balances the photograph in a unique way.

The Hallgrimskirkja is one of the largest buildings in Iceland. This is the south side looking at the back of the building. Here the building looks quite small but this is an optical elusion caused by using a very wide angle 10mm lens and standing only a few metres from the building. In fact the main steeple is 73 metres tall.